A Shinobi : Sidelines
by alexiel-neesan
Summary: AU, sidefics to 'A Shinobi is a high school student like another' Because one doesn't see everything. Because one doesn't know everything. Get to read between the lines. ABANDONNED
1. Chapter 1

**A Shinobi is a high school student like another: Sidelines**

First Cut

_Because one can't say everything. Because one alone doesn't see everything. Because one alone doesn't know everything. _

_Short texts exploring the Alternative Universe of 'A shinobi is a high school student like an other', using the theme list from fanfic100.livejournal._

* * *

Beginnings (Kakashi/Iruka, during 'A Shinobi') 

Technically, one would say it began the day an unexpected third zombie made his appearance in class. Others would say it began when two young men sat on a porch outside a very loud party, one lending his vest to the other. It could have began in a fight in the hallway at school too, a fight where one won a blackened eye and an address when helping the other. Or maybe the beginning really happened in a studio upstairs a comfy-feeling pub, when those two men shared a strange silence. Very very technically, it began a Saturday night in an unlighted corridor at another party to end at one of the guy's house, into his bed.

But this was just the beginning.

* * *

Ends (Obito/Kakashi, before 'A Shinobi') 

I saw. I saw it many times. I brought it. I gave it.

I didn't do anything , this time. He just saved me, once more - for the last time. I saw his eyes, behind his mask's visor, his red eyes that he'd told me many times jokingly that they would be mine if he didn't have anymore use for them. He wasn't joking.

It wasn't different from the times I had brought it, in the end. He just ...stopped, like any other.

* * *

Insides/Outsides (Iruka, before 'A Shinobi') 

He's screaming, inside. Screaming for help, screaming for his friends to see, to see what's done to him, to see that he's being used, treated little more than like an object. He want them to finally look at him in the eyes and see. Emily had done it, once. But then, she seemed to have forgot, or to have brushed it off. They are the perfect couple to the outsider eye after all. Nothing that happen between them can possibly be bad.

He smiles, to the outside. But it is nothing else than a facade.

* * *

Hours/Days/Weeks/Months/Years (Kakashi, before 'A Shinobi') 

Hours spent in shell shock soon turned out into days. Once he snapped out of it, he distanced himself from those who where like his family. He was feeling guilty, the most abominable and loathed guilt was eating him inside. He only let Tsunade approach him from time to time.

Then the days turned into weeks, and as quickly in months. He couldn't look Rin in the eyes anymore. He couldn't just see her - or Raidou, or Sensei, for all that mattered, nor anyone else. He just couldn't.

So he went down.

Months had led to other months. The months had turned to a year. He had put his head out of the mud he had willingly went through. He had spoke to Rin, about what he had and was still feeling; of the guilt. All of his surrogate family's members had helped him. At the beginning of the term, he had gone to the city public high school. He had agreed with Sensei that he couldn't go back to service like before now. He was still training, and taking his share of assignments, often going with Raidou and Genma now, but his life had stopped from being one-tracked. He knew it had been a while since Sensei had wished him to have at least a part of his life that was close from normalcy. But it had taken this event to make it happen.

It had been one year since Obito died.

* * *

Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Blue/Purple/Brown/Black/Colorless (Kakashi, during 'A Shinobi') 

The world around him was full of colors, he just had to rest his eyes somewhere, and all the colors from the rainbow where there.

Red was an easy one. Kodia's and Vincent's eyes were of that strange shade of dark blood red. Haku's favorite dress was red. Iruka's cheeks were turning red to the most interesting promptings.

Orange was an easy one too. If one was looking at Naruto, orange was the first thing that was jumping to attention.

Yellow was unmistakingly making him think about his Sensei's hair, and then, Naruto's one.

Green, blue and purple could easily be spotted at school. One because clashingly bright green was the favorite color of a bouncy and loud guy in his class, the following was the color of one's full-body tattoos, making his skin appear blue and the last was Itachi's girlfriend's hair color. Or maybe hair dye color, but he had never seen her without it once.

Lots of people had brown hair or eyes. Rin, Raidou, Genma had eyes and hair of various shades of brown. Though his favorite shades were the ones displayed on a certain dolphin.

Black - he could see this color a bit too often. After all, their uniforms were black, and half of Konoha population was black haired. The streets at night were black too. But where he could see black the more often was on Emily and Izumo ; they weren't the 'goth leaders' for nothing.

White was in the HQ's and high school's corridors. White was the infirmary too. White was Rin's work apron. White was his visible chakra.

Then why, with all those colors around him, why did all he ever saw watching him back in the mirror was a colorless figure?

* * *

Family/Parents (Kakashi, no timeline) 

His family is not really a subject he likes to think about. When he thinks about his family, to tell the truth he only thinks about his father because the man was the only member of his family by blood that he had ever known. By blood and in blood he often thinks when in one of his dark and sick humor phase. After all, the man gutted himself the door next to his son's room.

But deep in somewhere, he knows he has another family, one bound by strangers' blood and alcohol spilled on his uniform, by sweat and grim and training, by restless nights in the warm and safe circle of someone's arms, by friendship and honor, by death shed and witnessed.

And, as much as he doesn't want to admit it, they're his family by and in mind.

* * *

Triangle (Rin/Obito/Raidou, before 'A Shinobi') 

There had always been some sort of connection between the three of them. It had took longer for this connection to get a proper definition, but once it had it, things went a bit awkward. Raidou and Obito could take down anything and anyone together, and none of the two trusted someone else more than Rin to watch their back. Well, Genma could be trusted for anything, but not with alcohol.

Rin and Obito were what one could call 'an item'. They fitted each other quite nicely - sure, they had their share of yelling and all, but one could feel that one was everything to the other.

What one couldn't know, was that Raidou had literally pushed Obito to Rin. That Raidou loved Rin. And that maybe he loved her as much if not more than Obito. That he wanted her happy, and Obito was making her happy. So there.

Raidou still loves Rin deeply, but it feels wrong to him. He feels guilty to just think about his best friend this way, just to think that now he could finally say what he have to tell her.

So Raidou swallows his feelings back and waits, silently comforting the weeping woman he loves, the smoke of the incense slowly raising from the cold stone of the grave.

* * *

End of First Cut 


	2. Second cut

**A Shinobi is a high school student like another: Sidelines**

**Second Cut**

_Because one can't say everything. Because one alone doesn't see everything. Because one alone doesn't know everything. _

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

_023.Lovers (Kakashi,Iruka,Izumo,Kotetsu, Emily - slight crossover with 'Sentou Yousei Yukikaze', sometime before chapter 21)_

"Come on dude, it's so obvious!"

"I don't agree with you - beside, you're biased, 'Ruka."

"Biased? How so?"

"You're gay! Hey, help me there guys, want you?"

Emily and Izumo were happily oblivious, up there on the comfy couch, to Iruka and Kotetsu sitting on the floor in front of the TV set and arguing loudly.

"I agree with whatever said 'Ruka..."

"Humm? What did you say?"

"Thanks loads Emy, Izumo, you're really helping."

A knock at the door didn't stop Kotetsu's grumbling.

"That's Kakashi! Come in, it's open!"

As soon as he stepped in though, he was attacked by Kotetsu.

"Man! Please, answer me truthfully! Are they gay or not?"

Kakashi freeze. The buzzing sound of the TV set could be heard.

"... what?"

"Jake and Rei! In 'Yukikaze'! I say they're so not gay, but Iruka thinks the contrary..."

"Man, look at the truth! They're so banging each other."

" 'Ruka, I'd like to rectify that," Interrupted Emily, half sprawled on the couch, "they're not lovers : Jake so badly want to screw Rei, but pilot-boy is too obsessed with playing with his joystick to notice it."

Izumo got his head out of his book to look at his girlfriend.

"I can't believe you've just said that, hun. That was sick."

"You know you love me."

Kakashi, still halfway through the door, rose a hand as if to ask a question.

"...the hell 'Yukikaze' is anyway?"

OoOoOoO

_030.Death (Iruka, no timeline)_

Death is hearing your mother cries suddenly and your father curses.

Death is not understanding what's going on from the back-seat and seeing lights.

Death is feeling things that shouldn't be, rolling and tumbling and crushing-crashing.

Death is a horrid, horrid noise of grated metal and crunched bones and shattered glass and gurgling liquids.

Death is having a piece of metal -or was it glass- stuck in your face.

Death is red and thick and metal-smelling and sticky.

Death is not remembering and wondering where Mum and Dad are.

Death is being got out of a metallic carcass with lots of lights and yelling people around.

Death is hearing people saying that you're lucky to be alive.

Death is waking up in a white white place with your Aunt Alice/your Uncle Syd/your Uncle Franck next to you.

Death is twenty or more stitches itching on your face, plaster cast and more stitches everywhere else, even inside.

Death is asking where Mum and Dad are and not understanding why the people keep avoiding answering and looking at you.

Death is going to live with your Aunt Alice and Uncle Syd and your Cousin Emily who likes to dance and to dress up and your baby Cousin Shikamaru who does bored baby things.

Death is going back home only once, to tell and show Aunt Alice what you want to keep.

Death is remembering what happened finally - even if they say you shouldn't, even if you don't understand, and crying at night when no-one else's here, when no-one else can hear.

Death is a cold grey square stone under a tree.

Death is going to see a doctor twice a week for two years, then once for another year, then not anymore.

Death is remembering the noises every time you see your forever-scarred face in a mirror.

Death is remembering your parent's faces thanks to a picture on your night-stand, thanks to pictures frames stuck on the walls in your Aunt Alice and your Uncle Syd's apartment, just over the apartment that was home.

Death is seeing your Uncle Syd's sad smile each time he talks about his baby sister Margaret, about his brother-in-law and best friend.

Death is a void.

Death is wondering what they would have thought of you.

Death is wondering if they would have loved you less if they had knew you as you were now.

OoOoOoO

_035.Sixth sense (Iruka, sometimes between the middle of chapter 21 and the end of the 22nd)_

It felt like he had always had this... extra-sense, tough he could remember that at a time, 'it' wasn't there. And it was a time that wasn't all that long ago. But the difference between before he could taste/feel/use 'it' and when he could was blurry. It was a bit like when you stopped having hiccups - you remember when you had it, and you suddenly realize that you don't have it anymore and you just don't remember it stopping. But you adjusted, and it's normal.

'It' was like being able to see without eyes, to feel without skin. 'It' was like another sense constitued of a mix of the five others all together. It was like having an extra limb which was purely mental, like the representation of telepathy in the comic books he used to buy with the guys back in middle school and which he still keep on a shelve.

He didn't know if he has to be afraid of it or not.

He didn't know who he could talk to about this.

Then, as he was filling his uncle Franck's shift at the bar during the holidays, two days after his last unanswered message had been left to Kakashi's phone, and he was getting really worried, because Kakashi had been a bit weird when he had left him the last time he saw him, he 'saw' them.

He 'sensed-saw' the same men again in the week. And again. And again.

And it was time he went back to school, and he knew who -if this who was here, if this who was all right, if this who still wanted something to do with him- he had to talk to about them... and his 'sixth-sense'.

OoOoOoO

_040.Sight (Itachi, sometimes between chapter 21 and the end of the 22nd)_

Itachi doesn't understand what's happening to him. Something happened to his sight, to his eyes. It's weird, it gives him headaches, it makes him dizzy. He saw himself in the mirror in the bathroom once - the bathroom in the bedroom which had been given to him, in this old dusty house full of ghosts and memories that don't belong to his family anymore. The house is the clan's one, with wooden and tatamis floors and delicate paintings on rice paper panels. Itachi feels unworthy of this place - no, it's all that's left of his family, himself included, which is unworthy of this place. He cried a lot, silently, in this new empty room, away from his parent's one, the tears blurring his sight.

His sight turned too sharp sometimes, too observant, too calculative. He could understand the meaning behind one of his father's eyebrow move, behind his stony face, behind his mother's lowered eyes. He sometimes wished he had clawed his eyes out this night, in front of his burning house - on his little brother's eternally still body.

He wished Anko was there. She had stayed with him all night the 24th, stayed next to him on the bench on the other side of the glass wall of the room where his little brother was agonizing, stayed next to him when the line on the monitor had turned flat, stayed next to him when he had brokenly wept and sobbed and silently wished hell on his absent parents. They had first got out together for fun and scandal. Now he knew she was a friend, a real one. It scared him, it had been so long since he cut all ties...

His father had refused for her to come here, and had transmitted this order to the security. Itachi was alone with his sight and his thoughts.

He remembered his sight acting up when the building was burning. He remembered being able to see the patterns behind the flames, the movements inside the building. He remembered being able to see his brother's body where he and the... what?... black-dressed man had fallen. He remembered sitting in the bench in the corridor, and being able to see his brother's body slowly shutting down - being able to see the energy driving the heart slowing down, and down, and down, to see the lungs take a shallower breathe each time, to see the blood flow slow down and down and down and then stop.

The face which had looked him back in the mirror in the bathroom had had red eyes - and not just from crying.

**End second cut**


End file.
